Post navigation

One of my all-time favorite desserts is Tiramisu. The creaminess of the filling, the sharp flavor of the liqueur-soaked ladyfingers, the bitterness of the espresso and the sweetness of the cocoa powder… my mouth is watering just thinking about it. I have easily fallen in love with some Tiramisus in my time.

This year for my mom’s birthday (Happy Belated Birthday, Mom!!), she asked me to make this Tiramisu bundt cake that she had pulled out of a magazine around a year ago. She has been bugging me to make it for somewhere over 6 months, but I kept finding things that I wanted to try, so I kept putting it off.

I’ve already made champagne cupcakes in the past, and while I enjoyed them, I really felt the champagne didn’t lend enough flavor to the cupcake itself – what I tasted more than anything was the dryness of the champagne.

No longer.

This time when I found out I would be making these, I set myself on a quest for a good bubbly. While I love champagne dearly, I have decided it’s just not quite appropriate for a cupcake. This time, my goal was to find a prosecco or sparkling moscato to give these lil cupcakes the extra “oomph” they needed. After spending some time at Trader Joe’s, I found exactly what I was looking for – a delicious tasting prosecco. Has the bubbles, but just a bit more flavor than champagne.

A colleague of mine is having a brunch coming up and hired me to make some mini-cupcakes for the event, so starting today I get to have a few different mini cupcake posts!

I ran into this woman when I was getting my hair cut, and what she requested for the cupcakes was something that was not “pedestrian” – something unique and delicious. So I came up with a bunch of suggestions, and she selected four that she and her sister liked best. One is a recipe I’ve made and absolutely love, one is a recipe that I’ve made before and am improving on, one is a cake recipe I’ve made and I’m turning into cupcakes, and one is brand spankin’ new!

My brand new recipe is something that sounded interesting and very different – Earl Grey cupcakes with a lemon frosting. Personally, I’m not a tea fan – I like peppermint, mint, and then I switch to coffee. But the idea of a tea cupcake just sounded so appropriate for a brunch, I couldn’t not include it in my list of recommendations.

This cupcake ended up oddly delicious – it almost tasted like a light lemon poppyseed cake. The tea flavor doesn’t come out until the very end, as a subtle lemony-floral aftertaste. Continue reading →

It’s been a while for me, with starting a new job, the holidays, and some stuff in between – I promise to bake soon!

But today’s post is about something much more important – joining the protest against the SOPA and PIPA acts that are in the House and Senate today. I don’t want to write too much, but I feel the need to say something because of who I am and what this blog is about.

From my understanding, what these acts will do is allow companies to shut down any other websites they feel are infringing on their property, intellectual or otherwise. Anything that can be seen as copyright infringement could be shut down/blocked right away by court order. No trial needed.

For me and other food bloggers out there, I feel this could be a big impact – all it takes is one big name to put the kibosh on all the rest of us that use a recipe of someone else’s, that comment on said recipe, that have a follower comment on said recipe (oh that’s right – I didn’t mention that. It doesn’t even have to be YOU who posts something, it can be just a comment on your space!).

While I agree with the general idea of providing protection for the Internet and its users, I also feel that there can be something done about piracy without DNS blocking (which is the same way China censors its Internet. Interesting). There can be a better bill written that doesn’t attack free speech online, that doesn’t offer up censorship to the extreme.

And for Senator Leahy, who believes that all opponents are obviously gaining from piracy in some way – I bake things. I properly provide links to recipes I use. I don’t steal intellectual property from other people. Thus I’m not gaining from piracy, and I’m STILL against this.

If you agree with me – contact your elected officials and let them know. I know I will.

Every year, there is a tradition in my family of baking all the holiday cookies over the first weekend in December. It’s called “Cookie Bake” (and sometimes “Cookie Insanity”).

This started back in 2004 with my cousin and I doing this alone – all in a Chicago apartment kitchen (ever seen one of those? They’re not all that big). Now it has evolved to include my mom and dad (my dad being the dishwasher and go-fer), as well as anyone else we can bribe and/or threaten into helping us (sometimes an aunt, sometimes a friend). We run three mixers, three ovens and just go and go and go until everything is done and boxed up.

Every year we get rid of a few cookies and try some new ones, unless something is truly spectacular (more on that later). This year, due to price of ingredients and all that includes, we decided to try to make less batches, but smaller cookies (so hopefully we’d still end up with crazy amounts of cookies).

Final tally for 2011 (including my guesstimations on some cookies): 2,467 cookies.

Wow – it has been WAY too long since I’ve written an update (and yes, I know my last post starts the same way).

Anyway!

To kick start myself back into the baking (tis the season), I decided to formulate my recipe for funfetti cake – mainly because I had a groom’s cake with that cake type 🙂

For those of you who don’t know, funfetti is a great cake – basically a plain vanilla cake, but with some rainbow sprinkled mixed in to give all these little points of color within the cake when you cut it. I swear it tastes better than regular vanilla cake… but I’m part of the funfetti generation, so I’m a wee bit biased!

The groom for this cake is a vanilla lover, so he requested vanilla with a simple vanilla buttercream. Enter Kat – Funfetti cake with some Vanilla Italian Meringue Buttercream. I’m excited for this cake – this was going to be my first fondant-less cake for an event. Continue reading →

I know, I know, it’s been far far too long since I’ve updated, but I can’t think of a better reason than to discuss an upcoming venture – joining the Baking GALS!

For those of you (like me) who had never heard of them before the “GALS” part of the title stands for “Give A Little Support”. The purpose of this organization is to get bakers from all over the country to bake goodies to send to our men and women in war zones to give them a little something sweet that reminds them of home.

Thanks to my friend Paula (The Culinary Cheesehead) for introducing me to this wonderful organization. And to all of you out there – I think it would be absolutely wonderful if we could get as many people as possible signed up to help give something back to those people protecting our country and our beliefs out there. Even if you don’t agree with the reason that our soldiers are where they are, every soldier out there deserves some sort of comfort, especially going into the holiday season.

For those of you out there that I personally know, if you are interested in being on a team with me and Paula (go Star-Spangled Bakers!), let me know! 🙂